Rating: 
Summary: A Woman of Courage
Review: This was without a doubt the most mezmorizing true life story I have ever read. Jeanne Boylan is a woman of unique courage that has developed a rare gift and used it to help so many others. I will remember her story for a long time. It was so emotionally involving I couldn't put it down from the very first page. She describes the behind the scenes of so many of the big crime stories of the last decade. Through every story you get to see and feel with her as each reaches it's conculsion. I wanted to find this woman and give her a big hug and say thank you for being there to help so many victims through such difficult circumstances. A must read for any one.
Rating:
Summary: Bend 'profiler' moves on, but first tells of lessons learned
Review: (I have no doubt this violates your word count for customer reviews. It is a piece I did for the online site I work for. I couldn't find a more appropriate submission point. Perhaps an excerpt could be posted?) Jeanne Boylan was sitting in the hot southern Arizona sun, a long way from her Bend home, doing her nails and getting ready for the next stop on her book tour while talking about how she came to write a best-selling book about a life she never intended to live, yet up to now has been unable to turn away from. "I never intended to write a 'true crime book," she said. "I never would pick up a 'true crime' book, watch a cop show." She also didn't want to see her face on the cover of her book, but there she is, almost glamorous: the blond woman in black T-shirt and blue jeans, a quick hotel lobby shot when she was fighting the flu, several years ago. Her face, staring out from bookstore shelves across the nation. You can see how she won the crown of homecoming queen back in Colorado, when she dreamed of nothing but escaping over the Rockies and seeing the world - perhaps even becoming a globetrotting reporter. But fittingly, Boylan is not alone on the cover of her book, "Portraits of Guilt," which last week had risen to No. 3 on the U.S. "reading circles" list at Amazon.com and was bouncing as high as the top 200 of the Web site's sales overall. She shares the cover with the photos and the sketches of three killers, including the Unabomber and the man who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas, surely the most heartbreaking of the cases recounted in the book. The subtitle says it all: "The Woman Who Profiles the Faces of America's Deadliest Criminals." Call her a "facial identification specialist," but for heaven's sake DON'T call her a "police sketch artist." She's not and never will be one: "It's not the point of this work to make something artistically or aesthetically fabulous, but to make something accurate." Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive about the book, in which Boylan, aided in the writing by fellow Bend resident Barbara Findlay Schenck, weaves the stories of the major crimes she was called in to help untangle with a sadly familiar homefront tale of how such demanding work eventually took a fatal toll on her marriage. Boylan will be back in Bend in a few days, holding a Barnes & Noble book-signing. But she's making major changes in her life. "I am trying to get out of this work," she tells anyone who will listen. But her own written words, closing out the book's prologue, show just how tough that has been in the past: "Each time the call comes, I go. You see, I can't say no." Indeed, the book title has twin meanings: not just the legal definition of guilt, but the kind left in the wreckage of many a failed marriage and what led to it. The book-jacket bio says Boylan "has assisted on thousands of cases for the FBI, television news divisions, and investigative agencies from Beijing to Moscow. Her pioneering method of interviewing eyewitnesses is based on years of research and study of the psychological effects of trauma on perception and memory." It's not rocket science, to Boylan: Emotion affects memory, and the police artists' fat books of facial features - she calls it the "pick a nose" system - and the thousands of faces witnesses are given to pore over "entomb the actual image that created the trauma," in her opinion. That process doesn't produce, but actually aids in destroying evidence, as if a camera with a vital image inside has its shutter repeatedly pressed - while the film fails to advance. Boylan talks lovingly of Bend in passages throughout the book, written while closeted with her computer in a 100-year-old, windowless adobe near the Mexican border, starting each day at 9 a.m., forcing herself to turn off the PC and go to bed at 3 a.m. In the first scene, as an FBI agent snags her while changing planes in San Francisco, she longs for Bend's "welcomed aroma of the hot, dry air, a mixture of juniper and pine, tinged even in the high-desert summer with the faint scent of pine-fueled stoves." Soon, she is helping a secret witness - the only living person to have seen the Unabomber - undo the damage done by a contaminated sketch that had led to seven years of fruitless searching around the globe for a man who didn't exist. Through a careful, deliberate interview process that allows the old image to emerge from the mind's protected recesses, she gets the details she needs to draw a true likeness of the man who eventually would be arrested in the case. Boylan is learning on her travels that her book is a best-seller; a stop at Powell's "City of Books" Sunday finds that it's sold out, for example. And many readers are coming up to her and telling touching stories of their own tangles with crime and its aftermath. But more than selling books, she hopes to reach the hearts and minds of a legal system that has proven stubbornly reluctant to change its ways. "There is a missing chip in my brain that thinks about commerce," she said. "I care, however, about change." Her message to police and prosecutors: Stop treating witnesses like suspected criminals and start treating them - and their valuable memories - as key evidence that needs careful treatment and protection in order to see the light of day and bring perpetrators to justice. She is the common link between all these cases, from the Oklahoma City bombings to Susan Smith's killing of her two young children in South Carolina. She's usually called in to fix mistakes and turn things aright. Sometimes she does so in time, such as the momentous Christmas when she learned the kidnappers of a Bay Area jeweler's wife set her free in fear after their sketches were splashed across the newspapers' front pages. Sometimes, sadly, it's not in time, such as the Polly Klaas case. Even on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Arizona, on a promotional book tour, the crime headlines of the day have her good and mad. She is furious over the case of Gary Graham, whose execution last Thursday in Texas has cast a pall in many people's eyes over Texas Gov. and presidential candidate George W. Bush. To Boylan, it's another prime example of the mistakes prosecutors often make in the realm of witness memories. Given a last-minute chance by MSNBC, Boylan made a live six-minute plea to Bush by satellite Thursday evening, a half-hour before the execution deadline, pleading for him to delay the killing 30 days so that the evidence could be reviewed. Whether he heard her remarks or not, the plea fell on deaf ears. Boylan was not calling Graham a saint, by any means: "He's done a lot of other things, but I don't believe he killed this man." She explained how the key witness to the Texas slaying 19 years ago was "contaminated" when she was shown hundreds of photographs in a "skewed photo laydown" with only one person "even close to the one she described." The witness pointed to Graham in a physical lineup, then told the police officer driving her home that she had recognized the man she fingered from the photo she was shown earlier - and not from the crime scene itself. "No way this ID should stand up," Boylan said. "They killed the wrong man, but Bush did not care. Politics - what a case to close ou
Rating:
Summary: True to Herself
Review: I would love to spend this space reviewing this EXCELLENT book....but feel that I could not do it the justice it deserves. I have a more personal story to share: 16 years ago, I was lucky enough to have Jeanne Boylan as my sketch artist....and her wisdom and compassion has never left me. Jeanne was the one person who, in the face of my own tragedy, gave me a sense of justice and made me feel that I would survive. I am forever grateful to her and feel very fortunate to have been able to meet one of the true Angels that roam this earth. Jeanne is honest and sincere in her book.....true to how she is in real life. Because of her gift, her compassion and her innate ability to relate to some of life's most painful dealings...she has made our world a better and safer place. I know that it is because of her that I was able to "pick up the pieces" and move in a direction that would be productive. Thank you, Jeanne....words could never be enough to tell you what you've given me.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing, by fermed
Review: Perhaps I had my expectations all wrong when I purchased this book; and therefore if I feel let down it may not be the fault of the author, or of the book, but the result of my own notion of what I thought I would be getting and did not. I have always had a passion to know about people with odd occupations who feel intensly about them, and who become true masters of their esoteric activities. Now Ms. Jeanne Boylan has written a book about her career as an artist devoted to creating portraits of criminal suspects based on what witnesses have seen and tell her about. This sounds relatively simple and commonplace, since most police departments have someone engaged in the production of such drawings, but the task is incredibly complex. How is it possible to make words lead an artist's hand into stroking a pencil against paper and having a recognizable face appear, a face which matches not only the non-verbal picture in the witness's mind, but the actual physical configuration of the alleged perpetrator? What is the quality and the nature of the language used that causes this to happen? What words are needed (or if not words, gestures) to shift only slightly an eyebrow, to enlarge a forehead just a tad, or lower the left ear but not the right? And then make it all hang together so well, so vividly, that in one case a suspect turned himself in on the basis of her rendition of his face, figuring no doubt that Ms. Boylan's picture was just as good (or better) than a photographic portrait. How is this possible? This book will not tell you. There is no question that Ms. Boylan is masterful in what she does, and that to a certain extent she does try to convey some of the tone and thrust of her conversations with the witnesses. But somehow the book fails to satisfy in this respect, and the nature of what she does and how she does it remains mysterious and elusive. Actually, it remains essentially unaddressed. Instead she packs the book with the most trivial of irrelevancies (trivial to the reader, that is) including a superficial but prolonged description of her marriage falling apart, and dozens of pages devoted to airports and connecting flights, and telephones, and FBI calls, and Hollywood calls, and on and on and on. Once I realized that what I wanted and expected would not be forthcoming, I had to force myself to finish this book. That is something I normally do not do unless I plan to review the work: there are lots of books to read, and boredom should not be tolerated. This one really dragged. I am so sorry. Ms. Boylan seems to be a lovely, likable person, and I hate evaluating her book as being third rate. I believe that what she has by way of talent, and magic, and communication skills will one day be written about competently. I can't wait to read about it.
Rating:
Summary: UNBELIEVABLE !
Review: You will find this book very hard to put down once you begin reading it. If the subject matter is truly of interest to you, then you should buy this book. You won't be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: Portraits of Guilt
Review: Jeanne Boylan has a unique gift and her experiences are extremely insightful. In addition, it is evident that she has compassion for the victims and puts her heart and soul into solving these cases. A great book and a beautiful person inside and out!
Rating:
Summary: Portraits of Guilt
Review: A well written, riveting account of real life mysteries and murders. Jeanne provides a compassionate, objective view into the inner workings of the legal system, law inforcement, and national tragedies. Very thought provoking. Great reading!
Rating:
Summary: Portraits of Guilt
Review: This book is a winner! Very riveting. It tells stories of the underground world that I never knew existed. Jeanne has a terrifying yet compelling tale of the stories she has lived. I am sure she continues to live the lives and tales of her clients over and over daily. I feel like I have become a part of her as she recreates the gruesome and sad stories she has been such a large part. Her psychic ability to interview and delve into the lives of the charachters and come up with a picture is uncanny. I cannot wait to see the book as a movie!
Rating:
Summary: A Search for the Truth
Review: After losing both my grandchildren in the Oklahoma City bombing, I have become acutely aware of major problems the FBI had in handling the case. Ms. Boylan gives much insight into the way the case was mishandled and exposes the fact that John Doe II and others unknown are still at large. "Portraits of Guilt" is a courageous woman's journey in her search for the truth.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating!
Review: I love the personal touch that's been added to this *behind the scene look* at the criminal world. Not your ordinary who done it mystery, this book keeps you entranced with every page that's turned. Are you wanting to know more about what happened with the Oklahoma bombing? Are you wanting to know how she sketched the Unabomber from someone who saw him for only a brief minute over 7 years ago! You'll be on the edge of your seat. Unbelievable! Amazing! Jeanne Boylan has an un-canny way of getting inside the minds of the victims she's put into contact with. The compassion that's given speaks volumes in the final results of the portraits that are drawn. We can only hope that the powers that be and the agencies that are involved embrace and come to understand her methods and use them as their own. Keep up your quest Jeanne!
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